Star Trek: Voyager Season 4
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
401: Scorpion, Part II 1997 September 3
(First watched 2007-01-17)
402: The Gift 1997 September 10
(First watched 2007-01-17)
403: Day of Honor 1997 September 17
(First watched 2007-01-28)
404: Nemesis 1997 September 24
(First watched 2007-02-04) The non-standard manner of speech (nullify for kill, fathom for see, wayafter for afterlife, sphere for planet, and so on) used by the people on the planet was interesting, in that it truly made them seem a different culture. However, it doesn't feel right that the universal translator would do that for these people, while all other languages get translated to sounding "normal". Chakotay seems a bit of a hypocrite, talking about how where he comes from they try to find peaceful solutions instead of fighting... dude, you were captain of a Maquis vessel! You made it your job to fight a losing battle!
Far before the episode was over, there was a an obvious "twist" that seemed to be coming. Though my theory turned out to be half right... it then blindsided me with another twist. Well done. Really a very good episode. Interesting to see Chakotay assimilate into this new group, even if it took yet another freaking shuttle crash for him to end up in that situation.
(First watched 2007-02-09) The Doctor and Torres try to help a crazy hologram, with a B-story about Harry getting to know and crushing on Seven. Not bad. Voyager has its faults, but it is good at issues of artificial and quasi-human life forms.
Speaking of artificial and quasi-human life forms, Tuvok got promoted to Lieutenant Commander.
(First watched 2007-02-17)
407: Scientific Method 1997 October 29
(First watched 2007-02-19) Not bad. Mysterious problem (as always) requiring some subterfuge by the Doctor and Seven to figure anything out was interesting. The visuals of the out-of-phase devices being used to experiment on the crew were great. I have a feeling the writer of this episode isn't a fan of laboratory animal testing. I loved the scene with Chakotay and Neelix trying to outdo the other with claims of how debilitated they'd become.
I know people can sometimes be expected to try irrationally hard to stop something bad from happening... but when the Doctor said that a woman's circulatory system was collapsing, Janeway's response was to give her CPR? Did she really think that made sense?
408: Year of Hell, Part I 1997 November 5
(First watched 2007-02-19) So awesome. I feel a reset button press coming on, but so what. Timeship meddling with history, Voyager FINALLY taking visible massive damage in battles that go on for months... big things. Seeing the regular sets in such disrepair, it's clear a lot of work went into this episode. Finally we see the dangers to a ship that's totally isolated. It's the big things like that that make it clear they're totally going to reset things, though.
From a story standpoint it's fun how they used the time changes to make things worse for Voyager. In the original timeline, Kes had given them some information about how they could protect themselves months prior, but after the time shift they no longer had this information. They FINALLY come to the solution on their own after several months and the ship being battered to hell, and almost immediately it causes them to miss the next time shift, which probably would have put them back in good shape with none of it having happened at all. Instead they're left with the ship in shitty shape and time meddlers out to get them.
I like the villains, too. On the one hand they don't seem personally nasty, but they're also literally erasing multiple species from history in order to make the universe in the image they desire.
The First Contact reference is plain good fun. Though it is seeming increasingly goofy that Seven seems to retain knowledge of everything the Borg knew... plain physical reality makes that impossible.
409: Year of Hell, Part II 1997 November 12
(First watched 2007-02-20) In short, the greatness of the first part continues.
As far as time travel and crazy people meddling with large populations to fulfill their own desires, this two-parter pretty much eats Generations. There's even a happy ending for all, including the villains.
It does seem goofy that destroying the time weapon ship reversed all the changes, though. Except... things WERE slightly different in the end. If things had gone back to as they were originally, wouldn't the weapon ship just be created as it did originally, and everything would loop? At the end we see an indication that it's still in the process of being created... so hell, maybe this does all loop endlessly.
At the very end, though, the name "Krenim" didn't seem to ring any bells for Voyager. In this end timeline, did they no longer have the warning from Kes months prior?
410: Random Thoughts 1997 November 19
(First watched 2007-02-21) Interesting look at a telepathic society with a very different justice system. Rather than the person committing a crime being to blame, it's the person who had a violent thought which affected the assailant. The outlawing of violent thought brought about an underground of telepathic negative thought sharing.
411: Concerning Flight 1997 November 26
(First watched 2007-02-23) Aliens steal technology from Voyager, Voyager crew tries to steal it back; standard stuff. The real fun in the episode is John Rhys-Davies as Leonardo da Vinci, or at least a hologram version of him. It made me question the way the crew look upon simulated hologram people. By this point they seem to have accepted the Doctor as a person. The mobile emitter is referred to as "the Doctor's emitter", for instance. But what makes him more deserving of it than any other hologram person, such as Leonardo in this case? Yet one gets to be a crew member, while the other gets stored back in the computer to be pulled out for kicks. Is it completely arbitrary, or is there something special about the Doctor's programming? Something that would be equivalent to, say, the way humans define themselves apart from animals?
It was really interesting seeing Leonardo react to fantastical things as best he could. When a phaser blast passed right through him, he started questioning his very existence; I really felt for the guy. Yet the best explanation Janeway would give him about all the fancy goings on was that, like a bird wouldn't understand a human, he couldn't properly understand the things going on. So dismissive.
412: Mortal Coil 1997 December 17
(First watched 2007-03-07) Interesting. Neelix "dies", but thanks to Seven's medical knowledge can be revived after 19 hours. This exaggerates the sort of things people already wonder about the nature of when life ends, and really lets us into Neelix's head to see how he tries to deal with it. Is he still really the same Neelix? Was his belief in an afterlife a sham? Of course conclusions can't really be reached for these issues, so in the end we just see Neelix freak out over them and then get convinced to get over them and get on with life.
413: Waking Moments 1998 January 14
(First watched 2007-03-16) The concept of a race that lives primarily in a collective dream world is interesting. I'm also a sucker for the plot device of someone not being sure if they're really back in reality or not.
414: Message in a Bottle 1998 January 21
(First watched 2007-03-17) What a great episode! If there's one thing Voyager does well it's the Doctor, so an episode that was mostly he and a newer model Andy Dick EMH trying to recapture a ship was great.
Of note, as the middle of the middle season, this is basically Voyager half-point. Probably not a coincidence that it was picked for a major event like finally achieving some communication with home.
415: Hunters 1998 February 11
(First watched 2007-03-18) Receiving messages from home was more what I expected from the title of the previous episode. Sooo Voyager finds a massive network of communication relays, learns they're amazingly powerful and 100,000 years old... and in a rescue mission destroy one relay causing the whole system to shut down. I haven't seen an opportunity like that slip away since every other Stargate episode.
416: Prey 1998 February 18
(First watched 2007-03-21) Alien VS Predator. Three episodes in a row with these Hirogen. I guess now that they're away from the Kazon they had to write up yet another warrior race. Also Tony Todd.
417: Retrospect 1998 February 25
(First watched 2007-03-22) I kept worrying they were going to cop out and make Seven's memories accurate, but this was much more interesting.
418: The Killing Game, Part I 1998 March 4
(First watched 2007-03-23)
419: The Killing Game, Part II 1998 March 4
(First watched 2007-03-23)
(First watched 2007-03-24 & 26)
421: The Omega Directive 1998 April 15
(First watched 2007-03-27)
422: Unforgettable 1998 April 22
(First watched 2007-03-29) Interesting idea, a species that makes others forget about them. Could've been an interesting addition to the permanent cast. They'd get in one of the bi-weekly shuttle crashes, and by the time a rescue party arrived they'd have no idea who she was.
423: Living Witness 1998 April 29
(First watched 2007-03-30) OK, that was really really good. At first we know that something is off, but not what. As it turns out, it's just inaccurate history. The one thing that bugs me is that being set in the 31st century, it seems to set a limit on what progressions have gone on in the Star Trek universe. No Federation presence within communications distance that Backup Doctor learns of in his years in his new life, for instance.
(First watched 2007-04-03) So I understand how the stuff duplicated Tom and Harry exactly; it had access to them all. Yet at the end Janeway is talking about just using samples of DNA to make copies of people... but that shouldn't have allowed for the copies to have memories and clothes. Maybe someone reminded her of that offscreen.
(First watched 2007-04-04)
426: Hope and Fear 1998 May 20
(First watched 2007-04-14)
Finally, someone strikes back at Janeway for the galaxy-level power politics she plays for Voyager's interests.